WONDERDOG

After its catchy opening sentence—"Like everyone else in the world I am a lawyer"—Major's second novel loses its snap. The plot chronicles the descent of Dev Degraw, an attorney from Tuscaloosa, Ala., who's washed up at age 33. His career is in meltdown, his marriage is deep-sixed, he owes money all over town and his thirst for alcohol easily trumps any desire for rescue or redemption. His life now consists of a few coherent moments inside liquor-soaked days, moments he spends in two main pursuits: trying to avoid getting sucked into his father's gubernatorial re-election campaign and finding a way to skip the cast reunion of an awful television show, Bayou Dog , he acted in as a child. He's also trying to stay one step ahead of a client whose case he completely botched. That client finally catches up to Dev and gives him what he deserves. Majors (Swimming in Sky ) does a very good job of creating a character in a tailspin. There are moments of some poignancy, particularly with Dev's five-year-old daughter, as well as many clever one-liners ("She has summer teeth. Summer there, some ain't"). But Dev's self-pitying ways get tiresome, and the plot—what there is of it—is so weighed down by page after page of drunken quasi-comedy that it almost becomes unintelligible. Agent, David McCormick . (Nov.)